The
Catholic Church in America is at a watershed. The current crisis is the
culmination of decades of bad management, errant theology, and sinful behavior.
It is partly about sex and partly about bishops. It is also about deluded
therapies and an institutional Church that often goes flopping along with
the mainstream on moral issues. The crisis is mostly, however, about active
homosexuals in the priesthood. Anyone (including an archbishop) who does
not admit this is simply part of the problem.

The
media have framed the issue as one of pedophilia—that is, the sexual abuse
of prepubescent children. But the large majority of the cases in question
involve not pedophilia but the sexual abuse of teenage boys. Sexual attraction
to male adolescents is technically called "ephebophilia." But don’t expect
Mike Wallace to use this term on 60 Minutes. Not because it is a mouthful,
but because the media prefer not to treat homosexual behavior as the issue.
Still, it is the issue, and if the hierarchy does not root it out—if it
takes the easy approach of instituting "new procedures" for dealing with
abuse only after it has occurred—then the devastation is going to continue.

In
the Wake of Humanae Vitae

Let
me tell you a story. Two decades ago, a friend of mine attended a large
social gathering sponsored by a diocese in the Northeast. At one point,
all the local seminarians arrived, and as the music was cranked up, they
all began to dance with one another. My friend expressed puzzlement to
somebody familiar with the way things were under the local bishop, and
the reply was, "Of course, all the seminarians are gay."

The
institutional Church has been deeply corrupted by the sexual revolution.
Ralph McInerny was absolutely correct in his April 2002 "End Notes" when
he wrote that many of our problems can be traced to the widespread theological
dissent against Humanae Vitae. That 1968 encyclical was the defining moment
of modern American Catholicism. It put famous theologians into open rebellion
against the Holy See. It made heterodoxy normative in many, if not most,
Catholic institutions. In the wake of the dissent, many in the clergy began
to issue permission slips to the laity for all sorts of sexual behavior.
So why not give one to themselves?

I
hope we are beyond the point where any discussion of homosexual behavior
that is not entirely favorable is deemed "homophobic." We are not talking
here about priests with a homosexual orientation who are struggling to
live the virtue of chastity. We are talking about active homosexuals who
have broken their vows. We are talking about a lifestyle that is often
marked by compulsive behavior. Homosexuals have a more serious problem
with promiscuity and lack of restraint than do heterosexuals (see, for
example, Spence Publishing’s Homosexuality in American Public Life, edited
by Christopher Wolfe). Forty percent of homosexual sex today is reportedly
unprotected—this after two decades of safe-sex instruction. Active homosexuals
also constitute a relatively high proportion of sexual molesters. And they
have been welcomed into the Catholic priesthood.

How
did this happen? At some point in the early 1970s, a gay insurgency within
the Church began to gain control of at least part of the official Catholic
apparatus. Once in place, this network expanded. Many seminaries were turned
into "pink palaces" where young, devout, heterosexual men felt distinctly
vulnerable. And this is not just a diocesan problem: Many religious orders
run seminaries with openly homosexual cultures.

Is
it surprising, then, that these scandals have occurred? If you allow into
the priesthood men who in many cases have already chosen to flout Catholic
moral teachings and are disposed to mix sodomy with their ministerial rounds,
which include contact with teenage boys, there are going to be incidents
of sexual abuse.

Where
the Bishops Went Wrong

And
let’s be clear about this: There is no greater scandal on this planet than
a priest sexually violating a minor. Christ used the strongest possible
language to condemn the abuse of the "little ones." Such acts are the equivalent
of spiritual and psychological murder. They are often perpetrated on confused
youths who hunger for a father figure and never fully recover from the
betrayal of trust.

Just
as scandalous has been the handling of these incidents by bishops and administrators.
And this brings us to a larger problem in the American Church. For decades,
our episcopate has been in the hands of mildly "pastoral" men who (with
honorable exceptions) chose not to see what was happening on their watch.
This is true even of some visibly orthodox bishops. It is good and honorable
to uphold Catholic doctrine in the public arena, but it is much more difficult
to confront diocesan officials who dissent from Catholic teaching. Even
in so-called orthodox dioceses there can be found legions of heterodox
administrators who have ruined seminaries and made a hash of CCD and Pre-Cana
programs. This is where the courage of many bishops fails: They would rather
get on with their administrators—some of whom may be openly contemptuous
of the magisterium—than be a sign of contradiction. They simply let things
happen.

The
grossly negligent response of certain bishops to incidents of sexual abuse
is of a piece with this "I’m okay, you’re okay" style of episcopal management.
Sexual predators have been shifted from parish to parish, their crimes
buried in chancery files, and the families of victims in some cases bullied
or bought into silence. Bishops have treated the threat of bad publicity,
rather than the predators, as the problem. Their response to these wolves
loose in the sheepfold has been bureaucratic rather than spiritual and
moral.

Even
now, I am not sure that some bishops really get it, given the solutions
they are venting after meeting with Pope John Paul II in Rome. The crisis
is not going to be solved just by instituting new procedures, or tightening
up reporting, or using more psychological testing. It will disappear only
when bishops understand the responsibilities of their office and are not
afraid of striking at the root of the problem—which is going to involve,
among other things, firing vocations directors, cleaning up the seminaries,
and defrocking (with Rome’s permission) a number of priests. We are not
talking about witch-hunts, and due process is important. But why should
so many teaching centers of the Church be in the hands of people who not
only reject Catholic doctrine but don’t seem to mind priests breaking their
vows?

One
of the benefits of the current scandals is the exposure of the therapeutic
culture that has invaded the Church. The Catholic landscape is dotted with
therapy centers that purport to treat sexually abusive priests. These centers
give bishops the illusion that they are doing something about the problem.
But they are often staffed with "experts" who are sympathetic to the gay
agenda. These therapists are quick to label their patients as normal and
harmless after a few months of counseling and send them off for a new parish
assignment. It is worth noting that in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association
officially decided to stop treating the homosexual orientation as a problem.
In any event, anybody who knows anything about sexual pathologies knows
that the rates of recidivism are high after treatment. The credulity of
those who have bought into these programs for so long is truly astonishing.

What
the Bishops Must Do

The
current crisis presents an enormous opportunity for reform and renewal
within the Church. There is also a great potential for error. One popular
proposal is to allow priests to marry. But there is a good reason why celibacy
is a Church discipline. On a practical level, the Church discovered early
on that diocesan priests could not fully do justice to the vocation of
priesthood and the vocation of marriage, both of which involve a total
gift of self. Also, think about it: If the Church were to allow priests
to marry, within a decade or so there would be a lot of divorced priests—some
clamoring for remarriage. If the sexual revolution is going to adversely
affect single priests, it will certainly affect married ones.

There
are things the hierarchy can do right now to address the crisis, and there
are other policies that will take years to implement. First, the American
bishops have to admit that this is their problem, not Rome’s. One of the
ironies of the current crisis is that for years parties in the American
Church, including bishops, have complained about Vatican "interference,"
implying that they have more to teach Rome than vice versa. But the moment
the scandals broke, the cry became, "Why doesn’t the Vatican do something?"
The Catholic Church is not an American corporation, and the bishops are
not functionaries of the pope; they are the heads of the Church in their
diocese and are fully responsible.

And
they need to do a serious housecleaning. They need to ask a number of incorrigible
offenders to leave the priesthood. They may have to close some seminaries
or transfer their management to orthodox orders. I recently talked to one
young man who described life in the East Coast seminary from which he was
expelled for orthodoxy: lavish parties, plenty of liquor, never any silence,
an openly gay vice-rector, a liturgy professor who assigns Protestant textbooks
on the Eucharist and refers to the Blessed Sacrament as "bread" and transubstantiation
as a "theory." The only "good" news was that not all his fellow seminarians
were gay: One had a girlfriend who regularly visited his bed with the tacit
approval of his superiors.

In
the case of the abuse of minors, there should be a "one strike and you’re
out" policy. The severity of this approach does not violate the Catholic
understanding that all sinners are capable of change and repentance. It
is simply a prudential recognition that a disproportionate number of sex
offenders are likely to bide their time and strike again. We have a duty
to protect our youth, and this means we have no business experimenting
with more therapies and simply hoping for the best.

The
bishops should also consider incorporating Rev. John Harvey’s Courage program
in seminaries and treatment centers. Courage is a spiritual support system
that helps men with a homosexual orientation to live an interior life of
chastity. It works. Yet Catholic bishops and administrators are often hostile
to Courage, preferring programs that are more to the taste of gay activists.

The
bishops might also consider finally implementing the documents of the Second
Vatican Council, which, among other things, are an antidote to the clericalism
that still plagues the Church in this country. In too many dioceses, there
is an impenetrable clerical culture that does not involve orthodox lay
Catholics with real expertise in areas like management and organization—and
theology, for that matter. I am not suggesting the "clericalization" of
the laity, but it is important for both clergy and laity to grow out of
the habit of viewing the Church as a juridical machine run by a self-enclosed
hierarchy. The current crisis would not have been so bad if the hierarchy
had worked with consultative lay bodies that act as a reality check.

Like
the Sons of Noah

What
is the proper response of the laity to the crisis? Above all, it should
be one of prayer and trust in God. We should also examine ourselves as
Catholics. The laity constitute 98 percent of the Church, and these scandals
among the clergy did not occur in a vacuum. Do we pray for priests? Do
we foster vocations among devout and intelligent young men? Are we supportive
of parish priests, who have very difficult jobs and often only hear complaints?
Are we charitable toward their human failings?

Sometimes
it is a good thing for the laity to behave like the sons of Noah, who covered
their father’s nakedness with a cloak. St. Catherine of Siena, who lived
in a time of great crisis in the Church, reports Christ as saying in one
of her mystical dialogues: "It is my will that the sins of the clergy should
not lessen your reverence for them...because the reverence you pay to them
is not actually paid to them but to me." Our outlook in these matters must
be supernatural. Our attention should primarily be on God rather than the
sins of others.

That
said, the Church has serious work to do in putting its house in order.
St. Catherine also wrote: "It is essential to root out from the garden
of the Church the rotten plants and to put in their place the good ones."
F

George
Sim Johnston is a member of the Crisis executive board and author of Did
Darwin Get It Right? (Our Sunday Visitor, 1998).